


Tea Time

by audreycritter



Series: Cor Et Cerebrum [32]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Dialogue, Gen, No Plot, Tea, just men talking and eating cookies, no profreading we die like mne
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-29
Updated: 2017-11-29
Packaged: 2019-02-08 08:17:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12860520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/audreycritter/pseuds/audreycritter
Summary: Alfred Pennyworth and Kiran Devabhaktuni are on a now-annual trip to clean up the lake house for a family gathering. They take a break for tea and the weather does not.





	Tea Time

**Author's Note:**

> This is literally just pages of the fic equivalent of shitposting. It's just talking. So, I hope you enjoy it, but no hard feelings if you don't!

The small table between the armchairs is not their usual place for tea, but a tea service sits there all the same. Steam curls from the spout of the teapot, bergamot mixing with the smell of woodsmoke. A plate of premade biscuits makes a rare showing, instead of the homemade baked goods that usually accompany tea.

Kiran Devabhaktuni is the sort of man that would have been just as content to pluck raspberry Jammie Dodgers straight from the package. But in the kitchen when he’d opened his mouth to suggest as much, Alfred Pennyworth had shot him such a scathing look that Dev had clapped his mouth shut and watched silently as the biscuits were arranged on a delicate plate.

“We’re not heathens,” Alfie had said to the unvoiced suggestion, carrying the tray past Dev into the great room of the lake house.

So, Dev leans back in the chair and balances a teacup and saucer with one hand while taking a biscuit with his other. He stares at it for a moment, the dusty shortbread bright against his fingers.

“Do you think cabbages feel jealousy?” he asks, and next to him Alfie makes an unsophisticated noise into his tea. There’s a moment of slight, suppressed coughing and Alfie dabs his mouth with a handkerchief.

“Kiran, what in god’s name,” he says when he’s picked up his tea. He shakes his head and his voice is much calmer when he begins again. “I think I’m rather good at reading you by now, my boy, but I’ll have to beg you for some context on that point.”

“We tend to ask if things can feel pain,” Dev says, biting into the biscuit. He pauses to chew and swallow, not particularly wanting to fend off Alfie’s rebuking frown. “And some things can, of a sort. But emotional impulses in the human brain or consciousness often have physical components. You’re nervous and your palms sweat, you’re excited and your heart rate increases, so on.”

“I fail to see what this has to do with cabbages,” Alfie says when Dev takes another bite of biscuit.

“M’ge’ing ‘er,” Dev protests. There’s the rebuking frown. Dev sips his tea; he’d forgotten how dry Jammie Dodgers make his mouth.

“Alright,” Alfie says mildly.

“So,” Dev continues. “I hardly think a cabbage can be aware of jealousy in a sentient way, obviously, but do you suppose they might have an organic reaction? Suppose a cabbage sees-- well, see isn’t right term, they’re not cabbages with eyes-- but senses that a neighboring plant is using more resources. Do you think it’s cabbagy veins swell or grow hot with jealous rage that it’s neighbor in the cabbage bed is likely healthier, larger?”

A second after he finishes talking, Alfie’s wrist is on his forehead. He pulls back from the hand with an offended expression.

“Bloody hell, Alfie! I’m not ill,” Dev exclaims. “I’m just theorizing.”

The older man sits back with a slightly furrowed brow and pensively eats a biscuit.

“This is an unusual line of inquiry, even for you,” Alfie says. “And no, I do not think that cabbages experience jealousy, to answer your question. Or any of the finer emotions.”

“Do you really think so, then?” Dev asks. “Or are you settling for that because it comforts you?”

“You, Kiran,” Alfie says, stirring his tea, “are sometimes an ass.”

Dev grins and picks up another biscuit.

“I am,” he acknowledges. “But I was also genuinely curious, if it makes you feel any better. I’ve been mulling on it since Poison Ivy a few weeks past. She said something about the vines being angry and at first, I thought she was projecting, but then I wondered.”

“And there’s the context,” Alfie says, soundly faintly relieved. “You are aware her plants are mutated? They’re hardly normal.”

“So, a mutated cabbage might feel jealousy?” Dev asks, pointing to the last biscuit. Alfie shakes his head in slight refusal of the offer and Dev takes it from the plate.

“In Gotham, I suppose a mutated cabbage could do or feel anything,” Alfie concedes with a sigh. “Depending on your definition of sentience and autonomy.”

“And emotion,” Dev adds, pleased that Alfie no longer seems worried. “How much of emotion is physical, after all? It’s not as if we consciously choose most emotions, though we might decide what to do with them.”

“So, this theorized mutant cabbage,” Alfie says slowly.

“Or regular cabbage,” Dev says. “I’ve not given it up yet. Plants have been observed displaying self-preserving or territorial tendencies. We just don’t happen to call it fear or anger.”

“The theorized mutant cabbage,” Alfie repeats stubbornly, “might experience an organic process that approximates a human emotion.”

“You know, we’re not even entirely certain what human emotion is. We know chemical imbalance in the brain can make you all out of sorts. But I’ve also read about those with nerve damage or paralysis reporting reduced strength of emotion-- without the physical side for their brain to receive signals from, their emotions feel numbed.”

Alfie is pouring another cup of tea and starts, just slightly, as he sets the kettle down.

“When did you have a run in with Poison Ivy?” he asks, a little sharply.

“Hm?” Dev says, realizing, and pretending not to have heard properly. He knows he’s doing a rather bad job of it, but he needs to stall after just carelessly giving himself away.

“Don’t feign idiocy,” Alfie says, his teacup near his lips. “You’re a better man than that.”

“Self-preservation is hardly idiocy,” Dev counters. “And shielding a mate is a noble act, so I’ve been told.”

“Master Timothy, then,” Alfie deduces.

“What,” Dev exclaims. “Did I say Timothy? How’d you know it’s not Jason, or Wayne? Or any of them? Maybe it was Conner Kent.”

“If it were Conner,” Alfie says with an amused lift of his chin, “then it was also Timothy. Wayne would have worried about it to me, and you would have complained to me, with swearing, about Jason putting himself in harm’s way. Stephanie would have found a way to make it a joke and a good story; Damian would have reported it with little fanfare as technical details. Dick was in Europe when Ivy was last out and Cassandra would never.”

Dev sets his mouth in a thin line and glares at the older man.

“Has anyone ever told you that you’re far too clever for your own good?”

“Self-preservation is hardly a fault, if it is not idiocy,” Alfie returns, looking smug. “So, Master Timothy.”

“We were doing a bit of urban exploring,” Dev says, sighing. “Gotham’s well-stocked with abandoned buildings.”

“To its excessive detriment,” Alfie says, nodding.

“Timothy had his camera along; do you know he took your advice and started a blog? It’s mostly photos of deserted industrial spaces.” Dev pauses here to sip tea and notes Alfie’s pleased expression. “And we stumbled on Ivy’s place.”

“And left immediately, I should hope,” Alfie says, raising an eyebrow.

Dev shakes his head.

“She’d spotted us. So Timothy made excuses, pretending he was half-mental, and rang Conner when her attention was off us for a moment. He wouldn’t leave me and was out of uniform, but then they both swore me to silence-- which I’m only breaking because I’m right terrified of you, by the way.”

“Hm,” Alfie says ambiguously, looking over his shoulder at the tall windows. “Is it still snowing? It is.”

Dev feels like he’s escaped something more dire than being captured by Poison Ivy, who at the time had seemed briefly intrigued by the two of them until Timothy pretended to pinch his finger in his camera strap and yelped so loudly that it startled Dev, who spilled his paper cup of lukewarm tea all down the front of his shirt and swore. She’d ranted about plants for a few minutes, mostly complaining about noise disturbing and angering them, but had otherwise seemed fairly bored at the idea of dealing with them until Conner showed up.

After a final sip, Dev sets his teacup and saucer aside and stands to go look over the side deck into the drive.

“The road is well covered,” Dev announces. “Ought I go shovel?”

“It wouldn’t be a terrible idea,” Alfie says, glancing at his wristwatch. “The first of the others are coming in two hours.”

“Right,” Dev says, “thanks for the tea, then.”

There’s a faint clattering of dishes as Alfie clears the tea things and works in the kitchen just around the corner. Dev tugs on his coat and cap and ties his boots before pulling his gloves on, then he goes out into the white mess.

The wind isn’t awful, which makes the air feel less chilled, and the whole world feels muffled by the thickly falling flakes. He stomps down the stairs, kicking snow aside with his boots as he goes, and hunts around in the shed under the deck for a shovel.

For a few moments in the dusty, dim space, he has no luck. There are three oars, one of them broken, and a length of frayed rope. Frisbees with company logos sit in a rotting cardboard box. An ancient garden hose, cracked with links and peeling vinyl, sags against one wall. Dev spots a snow shovel, lying across the floor rather than propped up, under a grimy tarp. He shakes it off when he snags it, wary of bugs despite the cold, and shuts the door behind him when he goes back out.

The repetition of the shoveling motion, starting near the steps, is soothing and lends itself to thinking. Clinging bits of snow stick to his jacket and when he looks up into the sky of solid greyish white, the world feels like it’s been wrapped in cold cotton-- cut off from normal sounds, antiseptic clean in its frigidity, and safe.

He’s halfway across the drive when he stops to brush snow off his coat and hat and beard. He studies the rest of the small car park he has to shovel and then turns back toward the lake house and blinks.

The entire just-shoveled car park is already covered again.

Dev spins to look down the hill toward the lake and can barely see into the valley. He knows there’s a patch of pine trees on the far slope, that in bare winter days stands out dark green against the fallen, dried orange needles beneath, among the spindly and naked forms of the maples and oaks around them.

He cannot see the slope at all.

“Kiran!” Alfie’s voice carries on the wind, down from the deck.

“I’ve not done much good!” he yells back, stomping toward the stairs. “Ought I keep at it?”

“Come in,” Alfie says through the cracked open door. “It’s an exercise in futility at best.”

Dev stows the shovel under the decking and climbs the stairs in the swirling mess. The sky is growing greyer by the minute. He shakes off what snow he can outside the door, and goes in still covered.

Almost immediately, he’s dripping on the entrance tiles while peeling layers off.

“Sorry,” he mutters to Alfie, when the older man comes over with a laundry basket.

“Not to worry,” Alfie says, setting the basket down. Dev shucks coat and hat and gloves in, and unties his boots with tingling fingers.

“How long was I out?” Dev asks, with the gradual sense that he’d completely lost track of time.

“Nearly an hour,” Alfie says. “And with not much to show for it, I’m afraid. Master Bruce called.”

Something in Alfie’s tone makes Dev stop and look up sharply, almost stumbling halfway through yanking off a wet stocking. He catches himself against the wall to finish pulling it off.

“Everything alright?”

“I ought to have had the radio on,” Alfie says with a slight edge of self-reproaching. “The Parks Service has already closed the road at the entrance. He and Master Timothy tried it, and the secondary access road, regardless of barriers, but he says it was already becoming rather dangerous. He offered to come anyway.”

“It’s not an emergency,” Dev says. “I hope you told him so.”

“I did,” Alfie says. “It’s a change in plans but we’ll all survive. They’ll likely plow when the storm lets up.”

“Well, then,” Dev says, caught between disappointment and selfish pleasure. “It’s just the two of us.”

“I’ll put these things in the machine to dry,” Alfie says, picking up the basket. “Warm yourself at the fire and we’ll decide about dinner.”

“If we need them, I’ve granola bars in the car,” Dev offers.

“We aren’t quite that helpless, yet,” Alfie says with an amused quirk of his lips. “We did tote in enough to make at least five meals for upwards of ten people.”

“Oh,” Dev says. “Well, if we don’t need to save it all, then, I’ll be content with anything.”

“That reminds me,” Alfie says, as Dev sits in front of the fire with a sigh. “I’ve been putting it off, but I am rather curious what you and Master Bruce ate when I was out of town last week.”

“Don’t worry,” Dev says, holding his hands out to the warm blaze. “I fed your man-child.”

“That’s what worries me,” Alfie says frankly, the basket on his hip.

“I can take that up,” Dev says.

“Don’t bother. I was heading up anyway to look over the windows.”

“The only night we ate together, I made rice and stir-fry.”

Alfie gives him a skeptical look.

“What?” Dev exclaims defensively.

“Not a month ago, I happened upon you in the kitchen eating dry ramen from the packet at the sink. You’ll forgive me if I’ve little faith in your culinary skills.”

“I was shattered then!” Dev protests. “I know how to cook. Maybe not nearly as well as you, but I’ve kept myself alive for this long. Mostly.”

“Hm,” Alfie says, heading up the stairs to the loft.

“You say that like you’re not certain I’m alive,” Dev yells after him. He’s sitting up now, twisted away from the fire to look toward the stairs. “I’ve got a stethoscope to bloody prove it.”

“Oh, I wasn’t doubting you were alive.” Alfred’s voice carries down over the loft railing, disembodied and floating in the air. “The area in question was your involvement in that fact.”

“I’m a bloody brilliant man, and I can manage,” Dev grumbles, sulking in the chair with his arms crossed. He’d known the moment he tore open the packet of ramen the month before that it was going to haunt him, and he’d accepted it at the time in a haze of exhaustion.

“Do cabbages feel jealousy.” Alfred’s scoff drifts down from above like snow.

“This is why I asked Timothy about the robots. You were so put out, but I  _knew_  you’d–”

Alfred descends the stairs, his arms empty and eyebrow raised. Dev clamps his mouth shut.

“I’m in the mood for a sandwich. Peanut butter and jam. Do you mind?”

“Not in the least.” The front of Dev’s trousers is nearly too hot to be pleasant against his shins, when he stands from the spot near the fire. “I’ll make them, if you’d like a break.”

The older man is already ahead of him into the kitchen and Dev joins him. Alfred is rummaging in the cabinet for the peanut butter he must have unpacked earlier in the day and Dev finds bread in a wooden box on the counter.

“Right, then,” he says, with a slight bow. “I know you’ve a proper way to make even this, so you mightn’t as well tell me what to do so we’re not here all the night arguing about jam.”

“Could we, do you think?” Alfred asks, opening the fridge. “Spend the whole of an evening arguing about jam, I mean. Don’t you think one of us would tire of it?”

Dev is aware of precisely how non-threatening struggling with the twist tie on the bread is, but the stupid wire won’t untangle. He pinches it, spinning back and forth until he gets it going.

“I’ve spent just enough time near you to know that some of Wayne’s penchant for pedantry and arguing come from you. And I’m a stubborn bastard. So, yes, I do rather think we could spend the whole of a night arguing about jam and only have moved on to strawberry by the time we’re rescued.”

“Strawberry?” Alfred raises an eyebrow, mirth dancing in the lines of his face. “Where,  _precisely_ , did that fall on the list to have been held off until tomorrow afternoon? What’s the status of the other fruits?”

“Ah, see. It’s started already.” Dev grins and passes a butter knife from the drawer. “Strawberry’s inferior to a half-dozen other plants. And I’ll tell you why.”


End file.
